EditiX XML Editor 2020 - Manual

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Note

EditiX is a cross-platform and multi-purposes XML Editor, Visual Schema Editor and XSLT Debugger.

An EditiX Version Number is built with :
- A Year (like 2019) bound to major features
- A Service Pack adding minor features and bugs fixing (like SP1)
- A Build number (like 020119) including bugs fixing.

1. General Interface

a. Global view

1. A set of menus which are active depending on the current document type*
2. A toolbar varying with the current document type (look at 1b).
3. A tab list of opened documents with an icon and a file name depending on the current document type* and the current document path
   
4. A status bar with data about the current editing state
5. A panel on the left side containing various windows like a file browser, a project manager, an xpath evaluator...
6. A set of views for the current editor (XPath filter, Visual Editor by CSS) and a set of tools (XML Generator, Fast Search)
   

(*) A document type is choosen when opening a document or creating a new one.

EditiX displays information and error messages in the status bar on the right.

The message is displayed while 4 seconds, may be this is not enough for you and you may change this behavior by showing a dialog window using the preference application/interface/externalMessage.

b. Document type

Each document has a document type that has to be choosen when opening a file according to the selected filter from the file dialog box.

You may update this document type using the File Info panel (from the "File" menu).

When opening a document from the "Open recent" menu item or by opening a project from the "Open project" menu item, the document type is always restored. User may also change the default file encoding. User cannot define a new document type but it is always possible to assign another document type for a template document from the "Template" menu and the "Edit templates" item.

Here a list of available document types :

Document Type	Role	Icon
XML	Standard XML document
DTD	Document Type declaration document
TEXT	Simple text document without XML content
XSLT	XSL Transformations document
XSLT2	XSL Transformations 2.0 document
XSLT3	XSL Transformations 3.0 document
XQR	XQuery document
XHTML	XHTML document
HTML	HTML document (4.0 or 5.0)
JS	JavaScript document
FO	XSL-FO document
RNG	XML RelaxNG document
XSD	W3C XML Schema document
SVG	Scalable Vector Graphics document
DOCBOOK	DocBook document
EXML	Very large XML document. EditiX will use minimal functions for saving the memory. You will not have a tree for sample.
EXF	XML Form Designer
XXF	XML Form Editor
ANT	Ant project document
XFL	XML Scenario

Note : Blue color is usually for user XML documents, Green color is for transformation documents (like XSLT), Red color is for validation (like DTD), Yellow color is for visual documents (like SVG).

The document's icon is shown in the tab list of opened documents and when opening a recent document from the "File" menu.

c. Menu content

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

- Edit menu

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

- Search menu

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

- HTML

- Template menu

- Options menu

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

- Help menu

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

d. ToolBar content

Icon	Role	Shortkey*
	New document	ctrl N
	Open a document	ctrl O
	Save the current document	ctrl S
	Save the current document to another path.
	Undo. For some operations like surrounding a tag, you will have to use twice this action.	ctrl Z
	Redo	ctrl Y
	Cut	ctrl X
	Copy	ctrl C
	Paste	ctrl V
	Search / Replace	ctrl F
	Select the current node	ctrl T
	Surround/Unsurround the selection or the current node by a comment.	ctrl M
	Surround the selection or the current node by another element. It will list all the document elements for surrounding.
	Copy the previous sibling element.	ctrl shift P
	Check or validate the current document	ctrl K
	Format the current document
	Enable or disable the content assitant. Note that this state will be saved inside the project.
	Lock/Unlock the element updates. Note that this state will be saved inside the project.
	Display the whitespaces
	Access to the previous used XML document. It will work even if an XML document has been closed.
	Return to the last used XML document after accessing to a previous one
	Split vertically
	Split horizontally

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

- For XSLT document :

It contains the default toolbar and also this content.

Icon	Role	Shortkey*
	Enabled/Disable the content assistant
	Start degugging
	Debug until the next breakpoint	ctrl shift B
	Debug step by step	ctrl shift E
	Stop debugging
	Apply a transformation

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

- For XQuery document :

Icon	Role	Shortkey*
	Apply a transformation

* By default with ctrl or command (under Mac OS X)

- For DTD document :

It contains the default toolbar and also this content.

Icon
Role	Check the DTD syntax.
Shortkey

e. Status bar

When the mouse is over an error message a tooltip is visible.

- Background task :

It displays the following icon when a background task is working. It can be :

• An XSL Transformation
• A DocBook Transformation
• An XSL-FO Transformation
• An xQuery Transformation
  

By clicking on this icon, the user can visualize the current tasks. When a task is terminated, a dialog box is
displayed and if there's no background tasks the icon disappears.

- XPath location for the caret/cursor :

This is an XPath location from the current caret/cursor location. This XPath location has the following structure :

/tag[ number of node ]/tag...

/a/b[2] means the second 'b' element from the root 'a'.

- Error message :

An error message appears while checking or validating a document (XML or DTD) or while transforming a document. When detecting multiple errors a red icon is added. By clicking on this icon, the user can visualize all the errors from an external list. You can select the next or the previous error with the alt down or alt up keys.

f. Location bar

The location bar displays when navigating in the XML document the node hierarchy.

In this sample sample, it is displayed you are in a node family, the parent of this node is the element name, etc...

When moving the mouse over a node of the location bar, the XPath location is displayed. When clicking on this node, the text's cursor is moved to the bound location. A menu popup is available for moving, selecting, copying or cutting the selecting node.

g. File/ZIP/FTP browser

The File/ZIP/FTP browser is a left tree available with the bound item of the File menu or the View menu. This tree browses your home directory by default (or a zip file content). This tree maintains the last selected element (file or directory) even when closing and reopening EditiX.

For using the browser, you must select a filter with the document you want to open and click on the "Open" bottom button.

A shortcut key ctrl shift 1 helps you opening or closing the File browser. For changing the default directory, use the bottom icon and select a new one, it will be saved for your next usage.

Note that you can open a ZIP file with a Drag'n Drop on EditiX. For deciding what is a ZIP or not, EditiX uses the zipBrowser/zip extensions preference containing all the ZIP file extensions.

h. Other Panels

Others panels are available on the left interface part.

The File Info Panel

It is available from the File menu. It displays the File type, the size, the encoding charset and the File path. You can copy the File path by selecting the text inside. You may also change the current document type, sometimes this is useful when you choose a wrong file type.

The Node Search Panel

It is available from the Search Menu. It displays a panel for searching nodes as elements, attributes, attribute values. This is useful when you ignore XPath expressions. You can search from the start of the document or from the current selected node (in the tree or in the text). Note that this panel can be activated for detecting occurences of the current element by the editor popup or by activating F2. By the editor popup you can also display occurences of an attribute.

Character Reference View

This is available from the XML menu. It is used for listing UTF-16 characters and inserting it easily inside the editor. Note that some characters may not be visible due to limitation of your default Font. By doucle-clicking on a character, the character reference will be inserted at your caret location.

XML Snippets View

This view is available from the XML menu. The goal of this view is to help you to build your own elements library for increasing productivity with usual XML structure. This view is composed of folders and nodes. A node in blue is an element, in green this is an attribute. You may change the element or attribute name using a popup. Drag'n and drop is available for ordering folders or nodes.

An element node can have two states. The first state is the default one, the element added is the same one inside the library (except that if you add an element containing a text, the XML snippets view will store that it musn't close like <MyElement/>). The element snippet is added from the current editor element node (in the tree or in the text). Note that when adding, it will not include the children, this is your job to include after each child. The second state is a repeating state that is set using the tree popup. When an element can be repeated, a dialog box when inserting will ask to the repeating number. This is useful as usage for adding a table with various rows and columns.

For adding a snippet into you XML document you may using drag'n drop from the panel, or double-click or using the first icon of the toolbar's tree. Note that the added structure is not formatted, you may after format your document using the default format action (XML menu or inside the default toolbar). If you select a text before adding, and if your element snippet could contain a text, then the selected text will be surrounded by the added element.

For adding your own snippet, you must open an XML document with the good structure. Then after selecting a folder or an element snippet you must use the second icon in the toolbar of the tree. All the attributes will be added and you may delete or change the name or the value using the popup of the tree. When adding a snippet, if your editor's element has a text content, then a special flag will be stored for avoiding an auto-closing element. Using the popup of the tree, you may add a comment for your new snippet and decide if you wish to repeat it.

All your snippets are stored in your HOME/.editix/snippets.xml.

2. File management

EditiX supports several ways for editing a file. The drag'n drop is available from the file system to editix (tabbed pane) or to the project panel. Basically the file system is supported, but it is also possible to load and handle a document by a remote access like FTP. We describe here the way the user can manage its files.

For Windows Platform, you may choose EditiX as your default editor for any XML documents, thus editix will be opened each time you will select an XML document :
- Select an XML document,
- Right click, choose "Open With"
- Browse (go to the last item) for selecting an executable from the bin directory of EditiX Installation like editix-XMLEditor.exe or run.bat.

a. Standard file access

b. Remote file access

• FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access : Menu File, Item "Open by FTP..."
  
• ZIP or JAR file format : Menu File, Item "Open by ZIP..."
  

c. Project

Creating a new project

Here the dialog when creating a new project

The project name is just the final directory name from your project path. You may also choose a name for matching a current directory.

Editix will create in your project directory a sub-directory .editix. It will contain at least two files :

- config.xml : This file stores your configuration for synchronization by File or FTP.
- workspace.xml : This is the file storing all your parameters when using a document inside editix like your document type, the XSLT data source for transforming...

Tip : You may copy/paste the .editix sub-directory to retreive your configuration to another directory and transform it easily as a new editix project.

Opening a project

When opening a project from a dialog box, the editix's project is displayed by a specific icon. Then select this directory and click on the open button.

The project panel

The project panel displays your directory content ordering it by name from directories to files. For opening a document you may double-click on it or use the menu popup and the sub-menu "Open As...". In this last case you are sure to have the right document type. The last document type will be stored for the next opening.

When updating the project content you can refresh the panel using F5 or the popup menu (Refresh item).

Opening a file from the project panel will store any parameters defined inside editix, then for your next usage you will retreive it. For sample if you open an XML document and try to define an XSLT document for transforming, this document will be available for your next usage.

Usual actions like copy/cut/paste/rename are available inside the project for directories or files. Some shortkeys are also available like ctrl/command c, ctrl/command x, ctrl/command v for copy/cut/paste. Note that the cut action is in reality a delete action, it means you can't paste after the delected file or directory.

Among the actions, using the Explore popup action will open your File Explorer at the current file or directory location.

For synchronized your project path to a remote server, use the following actions

The green one is for downloading and the blue one for uploading to your remote server.

When choosing these operations you will have to choose a remote configuration :

It can be an FTP configuration or a file system configuration. For creating a remote configuration, choose the "New source..." button and select it. Your parameters will be stored inside your project for the next usage.

Then press "Ok" for starting the synchronization, your status bar will display the current operation. You can't start another synchronization operation while it is working. You must wait for the end of the operation.

3. Editing

a. Tree

The tree is another view of the text part. The tree is always synchronized with the document content and the current document location. When a tree can't be synchronized to the text due to a user document error this icon is located at the root . By clicking on this icon, the user can visualize the error on the text part. A tooltip is also available with a message summing up the problems.

User can select a node by clicking on the tree, thus the corresponding element is selected inside the text. It is also possible to move or copy a node by dragging and dropping the good content(*) (Due to a problem with the JDK implementation on Mac OS X, this action is reserved to Unix/Linux and Windows). You can move a node inside the tree or move it inside the text part.

(*) The operation will not work if you copy or move into an auto-close element like <a/> you must have a node with <a></a>.

We list here the available tree actions :

Action	Role
	Comment the select node. If a comment is located inside the node, this action is rejected so in this case commenting the node will need to remove all inner comments.
	Copy the selected node and its content. Note that this feature will act on the editing part.
	Cut the selected node and its content. Note that this feature will act on the editing part.
	Switch to another tree view. We detail it after.

• Default : The local node name is displayed with the first attribute value if available. If the node has more than one attribute a "..." content is added
• Prefix : The namespace prefix is displayed followed by the local node name. If there's no namespace prefix a "?" text is shown.
  
• Namespace : This is the namespace value followed by the local node name. If there's no namespace a "?" text is shown.
  
• Qualified name : This is the prefix and the local name.
  

b. Editor

General

Current node

The current node is located both with a left bar and by underlining the beginning and the ending part of the node. The "Search" menu includes actions for going to the beginning  and the end of the current node. Note that the left bar contains a single action displayed as a square for selecting the current node. This left bar is also colorized in red when an error occur with a tooltip containing the main error.

When using the ctrl key with your mouse, the bound XPath location is shown

Similarly, it is possible to display the attributes of the current node with the alt key with the mouse.

Node actions

For managing XML, the editor supports various actions :

- Ctrl up or down keys will select the next or the previous node (element or text node )

- Ctrl shift up or down keys will select the next or the previous sibling node.

- Ctrl page up or down will select the next ancestor or the first child

- When your document contains errors alt up or down keys will select the next of the previous parsing error

Note : If you double click on the error title bar, the error list view will be doubled.

- Various node selection or operations :

It is important to understand that all this operations can work only for the current node. EditiX may have a short delay depending your document size before finding the current one, it is notified by underlining the starting and the ending part of the node.

In this sample, the current one is fo:simple-page-master (we will use it for our next examples).

Surrounding a tag (ctrl-shift T) is a way to put a new parent to the current node or the selection (in priority for this last case).

The result is :

If you don't want this result, just undo twice.

When you want to comment the current node, call the "Comment/Uncomment" (ctrl-m) action from the Edit menu, the result will be :

If you want to uncomment, go simply into the comment and use the same command.

Popup

A popup (right mouse button) is available using the current node :

One useful action is the "Display Occurences of", that can display any repetitions of an element name or an attribute. Using also the F2 key, it can display all the occurence of an element node.

Here a document sample, using the popup action or F2, we have to the left part of the editor a new panel with :

Note : By clicking on the result header ("Node" / "First text") you can sort the result.

The refactor submenu is a way to change all your document, for sample supposing you wish to rename all the occurences of an element. This menu is available from the text popup.

The refactor actions will depend on the current node and the document type. For sample in an XSD document, you may rename an element name, it will change also all the references to this name (by reference, substitution group...).

References

Using the text popup menu or the ctrl key when moving the house, you may find easily node references. A node reference is a node that is bound to another one depending on the document type. For sample for the XSLT document, selecting the match value, you can find which nodes try to select this match part using an apply-select.

In this sample, we use ctrl and the mouse, which match "person", by clicking on "person" we can go to any nodes like <apply-template select="person"/>

It will work for XSLT, W3C Schema (types and references) and XSL - FO documents (page references).

c. Content assistant

A content assistant is available inside the editor part. This content assistant will change depending on the document type. There's several content assistants, each one can be accessible with a user characters sequence. In all the cases, when available the content assistant doesn't avoid the user to insert any text but it filters the possibilities depending on the current inserted sequence, the availability of a schema or the document type.

The content assistant works when inserting a characters sequence (like <) or by using the ctrl space key.

You may remove it using the escape key or avoid it using the following toolbar action :

When the content assistant is shown, each time you press a key sequence matching a set of item, editix will filter only the good ones. For sample if I insert "xs:a", the content assitant will only show me the items starting with "xs:a". If I want to see the previous items, I simply press "supp" for showing it.

When showing the right item, you simply press "enter" or click on the item.

- Default

This is available when inserting "<!". It offers an XML declaration, a Comment or a CDATA section. Using ctrl space, EditiX will be able to show you any tags or attributes even if no schema is found.

- DTD

It is available when inserting a "<!" sequence. This is a simple list of the available DTD parts like ELEMENT, ATTRIBUTE, ENTITY or NOTATION.

- A document with a schema

This last case is the more complex one and works with the following schemas :

• DTD
• W3C XML Schema
• XML RelaxNG
  

d. Namespace Manager

• A namespace prefix : This is a prefix definition or a bound namespace for the current node (meaning the definition is inside an ancestor node)
• A namespace URL : This is the namespace URL bound to the prefix. When a node is "qualified" it is inside this namespace URL.
• A current flag. This flag is for deciding what is the current namespace. There's only one activated flag because a node can't be assigned to several namespaces.
  

When adding a namespace definition without a prefix then a default namespace is added (under the format xmlns="...").

Here a sample with namespaces :

<p1:element1 xmlns:p1="http://www.p1.com" xmlns:p2="http://www.p2.com">
    <p2:element2/>
</p1:element1>

We have two namespace definitions for the URL http://www.p1.com and http://www.p2.com. The node "element1" is inside a namespace mapped to the URL http://www.p1.com and the node "element2" is mapped to a namespace with the URL http://www.p2.com.

e. Formatting

When editing an XML document, it is better to format the document for a pretty reading. Formatting is a process that will add empty spaces for aligning children nodes. These spaces will not corrupt your document because they are outside the tag content. Note that there's no Undo available when formatting, however you may save your document before and re-read it for undoing.

Formatting an XML document is available inside the default toolbar with this action . However you may choose more sophisticated scenarios for formatting through the XML / Format Menu :

- Pretty Format : This is the default one
- Explicit Open/Close : It will replace any closing tags like <a/> by <a></a>
- Text Trimming : It will remove any white spaces before and after a tag content. Thus <a>  1   </a> will becore <a>1</a>
- Unformat : This is a way for creating a very short document by removing any unuseful spaces. Only for an application processing.

For separating each element level (parent and children as sample), EditiX uses a set of tabulations. A tabulation is a special character composed with several whitespaces. You may change the number of tabulations and the number of whitespaces in the XML/Format submenu. You may also use the Preferences option (application/file/tab-size and xml/xml-config/format-space).

EditiX manages the xml:space attribute, it may help you for maintaining white spaces somewhere in your document. This attribute can have two values : "preserve" or "default", the first one will keep whitespaces after formatting, the second one will let the application deciding.

<personnel>
 <person xml:space="preserve">
  <name xml:space="default">   Don't keep spaces here
  </name>
  Keep spaces here
 </person>
</personnel>

f. Filter

A filter is a way for editing only a subset of your XML Document. This is a very attractive and efficient editing mode. It requires minimal knowledge with XPath Expressions (v1.0).

We suppose for our demo we have the following XML document :

<personnel>

<person id="Big.Boss" >
<name><family>Boss</family> <given>Big</given></name>
<email>chief@foo.com</email>
<link subordinates="one.worker two.worker three.worker four.worker five.worker"/>
</person>

 ...
</personnel>

This is a catalog of persons, this file is only a sample, it could have a totally differente structure.

Open your XML document and switch to the Filter mode using the bottom button :

Click on this button for creating a new Query

This query will filter a sub set of your XML document, for sample we will focuse only on the persons.

In the XPath Query Field, we will choose a main XPath Query that will get only major elements to edit, in our case we want to edit all the persons, so we write this XPath query : //person (meaning all the person descendant in our XML document).

In the Columns part, we choose the element part of each person we want to edit. For sample we have an id attribute for each person, a family name and a given name. We are going to write another XPath queries relative to each person :

For each person we want to edit :

The column name is a free text. The Column Value is a relative XPath Expression for helping the editor to know which part of each person you want to edit. In the first line we want the id attribute value, and in the second and third we want a part of the name.

For running your XPath query, you must activate this button :

The following grid appears :

You can edit each column, it will be automatically set on your final XML document. If you activate the "Automatic Activation", it will run the query each time you will invoke the filter mode. Note that your XPath Queries are preserved in your Project if you add your document into it.

You may also edit or remove the current XPath Query. You can add any XPath Queries you wish.

You may also remove or duplicate a data line, it will take into account the current selection.

g. Visual Editor

The visal editor is a way to edit your XML document using a CSS document.

It is available from the bottom icon. Pressing this button it will switch to the visual editor. It takes a delay for your first usage.

When switching to the visual editor, editix will search if you have assigned a CSS document inside your XML document. If it can't find, it will use a default CSS that will display for each tag as a CSS block.

For assigning a CSS document you may use "Assign CSS" from the XSLT menu or put it yourself inside your XML document like

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="book.css"?>

In this sample, it means you have a book.css CSS document in the same directory of your XML document.

Here a CSS document sample

* {
 font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 margin-bottom:4px;
 }

author {
}

book title {
   font-size:30px;
   color:#0044FF;
   margin-bottom:20px;
   text-decoration:underline;
}

book chapter title {
   font-size:20px;
   text-decoration:normal;
   margin-bottom:8px;
   color:#0022FF;
}

p {
   font-size:12px;
   font-style:italic;
   margin-left:20px;
}
 

Editix doesn't manage all the CSS properties, unknown property will be simply ignored.

List of managed CSS properties :

- background-color
- border
- border-left
- border-right
- border-top
- border-bottom   
- color
- font-size
- font-family
- font-style (italic,normal)   
- font-weight (bold,normal)   
- margin
- margin-left
- margin-right
- margin-top
- margin-bottom
- text-decoration (underline,normal)   

A color can be defined by hexadecimal values like #ABC or #AABBCC. Percent values are available for margin only, pixel value is also possible. Font-size or border width must be set in pixel.

The visual editor will display your tag content, it can't show an XML attribute value as this is not managed by CSS.

You can copy/cut/paste your content or duplicate your current element using the ctrl (command for mac) enter key. You current XML location is always displayed inside the status bar.

However it may be not enough for editing your XML document like adding/inserting/removing nodes, that's why you have "Display tag" check box at the bottom of the editor for helping.

When activating, each tag is displayed by a yellow box with its name. From each box, you can update any tag using a popup menu like appending a new tag, appending a text, delete it...

For displaying your final XML document just save it or click on the source icon here. Editix will then generate your XML document.

g. Generator

The generator is a powerful field for building XML parts using a simple XPath expression. This field is located at the bottom of the editor. The XML is generated at the cursor location only.

Your XPath expression is a subset of the XPath 1.0 standard. It supports predicates with an occurence, attributes (with or without value), children and the operators or / and.

Note : You can't have predicates inside predicates.

Sample of XPath expressions managed by EditiX and the XML result :

Generator
person

XML Result
<person>
</person>

Generator
person[2]

XML Result
<person>
</person>
<person>
</person>

Generator
person/name

XML Result
<person>
	<name>
	</name>
</person>

Generator
person/name/firstname

XML Result
<person>
	<name>
		<firstname>
		</firstname>
	</name>
</person>

Generator
person/name[2]

XML Result
<person>
	<name>
	</name>
	<name>
	</name>
</person>

Generator
person[2]/name[2]

XML Result
<person>
	<name>
	</name>
	<name>
	</name>
</person>
<person>
	<name>
	</name>
	<name>
	</name>
</person>

Generator
person[2]/name[2]/firstname

XML Result
<person>
	<name>
		<firstname>
		</firstname>
	</name>
	<name>
		<firstname>
		</firstname>
	</name>
</person>
<person>
	<name>
		<firstname>
		</firstname>
	</name>
	<name>
		<firstname>
		</firstname>
	</name>
</person>

Generator
person[@name and @firstname]

XML Result
<person name="" firstname="">
</person>

Generator
person[name or firstname or address or @id='test'][2]/family[father and mother]

XML Result
 <person id="test">
	<name>
	</name>
	<firstname>
	</firstname>
	<address>
	</address>
	<family>
		<father>
		</father>
		<mother>
		</mother>
	</family>
</person>
<person id="test">
	<name>
	</name>
	<firstname>
	</firstname>
	<address>
	</address>
	<family>
		<father>
		</father>
		<mother>
		</mother>
	</family>
</person>

4. Templates

a. Creating a template

b. Updating a template

• Edit : The template (default one or not) will be editable inside EditiX.
  
• Remove : Remove the selected template. This action is disabled for the default templates.
  

c. Using parameters

• ${date}: Insert the current date/time
• ${cursor} : The caret/cursor will be at this location
• ${default-encoding} : This is the default document encoding like UTF8 available from the File menu.
• ${lastname}, ${firstname}, ${address}, ${phone}, ${email}, ${company} : User information
  

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="${default-encoding}"?>

<!-- New document created at ${date} -->

${cursor}

5. XML Differencing

• The left tree which is the current document (or a new selected one)
• The right tree which is another XML document choosen by the user
• A summary table for each selected node from one of the previous trees.
  

	Element added
	Element moved
	Element equal
	At least, one different descendant
	Element removed

a. Comparing the current document to another one

b. Diff content

• The "Change" column with a name for classifying the difference : "attribute removed, attribute added, attribute changed, element different,
  element added, element removed, element moved"
• The "Content" column which contains the detail about the change. For the case of an attribute this is the name or the value of the attribute. For the case of an element this is the name of the tag.
  

6. XML Schema

• A DTD (Document Type definition) which is a very common and simple way to check a document
• A W3C XML Schema which is a pure XML schema that is more precise and complex than a DTD
• A XML RelaxNG Schema which is may be between the DTD and the W3C XML Schema
  

a. DTD

<!ELEMENT root ( child1, child2 )>
<!ELEMENT child1 #PCDATA>
<!ELEMENT child2 #PCDATA>

b. W3C XML Schema

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified">
  <xs:element name="root">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element ref="child1" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
        <xs:element ref="child2" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
      </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
  <xs:element name="child1" type="xs:string"/>
  <xs:element name="child2" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:schema>

For building a new W3C XML Schema the user must activate the "New..." item from the "File" menu and choose the W3C XML Schema
line. An editor for XML document will be opened. The content assistant will help you to choose your tags or attributes.

For using the visual mode, click on the Visual Editor tab.

The main table contains all your global definition. You can change an element name by double clicking on the name column. The properties panel lists all your current element properties. A property in a gray color means the property has not been used. You can set a simple type facets, list or union using the "Simple type" tab.

For editing an node content (a complex type) you must select the first column icon () or double click on the Type column cell. It will switch to the visual mode.

Using the right mouse click on the selected element (in blue) will show a popup for adding/removing/moving/opening....

Clicking on the square in front an element will close the element content, clicking again will opening the element content. The visual schema editor will display all your element content including reference elements and extenal types.

Suppose that the child1 node contains now a sequence like

<xs:element name="child1">
	<xs:complexType>
		<xs:sequence>
			<xs:element name="child1.1"/>
			<xs:element name="child1.2"/>
		</xs:sequence>
	</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

The root node will be now

When you use a reference element or an external type an arrow at the bottom right will be displayed. The visual schema editor will display too included or imported schemas, however you can't modify these external schemas.

When switching from the visual editor to the source editor, the last selected element is shown. This is similar from the source editor to the visual editor, the cursor location is used for opening the current node.

The user can generate an HTML document for this schema using the DTD/Schema menu (Generate a documentation from this schema...). Here a sample of schema document.

Rather than building yourself a W3C XML Schema it is also possible to let editiX generating a new one from an XML document instance.
For using this feature you must open an XML document and use the "Generate a W3C XML schema from this document" item of the
"DTD/Schema" menu.

After building a schema, you must assign it to your XML document. For acting, you have the "Assign W3C XML Schema to document..." item
from the "DTD/Schema" menu.

Here a sample for the result choosing an external test.xsd schema :

<application xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="file:///home/japisoft/test.xsd">
</application>

<application att1="value1" att2="value2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="test.xsd">
</application>

<application xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mysite.com/test.xsd">
</application>

c. XML RelaxNG

?xml version="1.0"?>
<grammar xmlns="http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0">
  <start>
    <ref name="root"/>
  </start>

  <define name="root">
    <element>
      <name ns="">root</name>
      <group>
        <ref name="child1"/>
        <ref name="child2"/>
      </group>
    </element>
  </define>

  <define name="child1">
    <element>
      <name ns="">child1</name>
      <empty/>
    </element>
  </define>

  <define name="child2">
    <element>
      <name ns="">child2</name>
      <empty/>
    </element>
  </define>
</grammar>

7. XSLT document

• A multi-view XSLT Editor
• An XSLT Debugger
  

1. An XSLT Editor in the center which is a standard XML editor with an adapted content assistant
2. A DATA Source view which is not editable but where the user can evaluate XPath expressions
3. A Result view which contains the transformation result document. This view has two modes : The Source mode which is a text result view and  an HTML 3.2 preview.
   

Template manager

The XSLT Editor displayes all the included documents and a template Manager. The template manager displayes all your template instructions, you may rename it
or move it by drag'n drop in the same or to another included document. When clicking at the beginning of a line in the template manager, the editor switches to the bound
editor and template instruction. A popup is available on each template line for inserting a new template instruction before or after this one.

Components

The XSLT Debugger has five main parts :

1. An XSLT Editor in the center which is a standard XML editor with an adapted content assistant
2. A set of breakpoints located beside the XSLT Editor
   
3. A DATA Source view which is not editable but where user can evaluate XPath expressions
4. A Result view which contains the transformation result document. This view has two modes : The Source mode which is a text result view and  an HTML 3.2 preview.
   
5. A Debugging data view at the same location than the result view.

User can drag'n drop a node from the Data source to the XSLT editor for building template, for-each or value-of instructions.

a. Basic Transforming

• XSLT file (required) : This is the current document path. This field must be specified only when transforming from an XML document.
  
• Data file (required) : This is the data document used by the XSLT document for producing a final document
• Result file (required) : This is the result document from the transforming of the Data file by the XSLT file
• Check box for opening the result file (optional) : When this element is pressed and the transformation is terminated, the result document is automatically opened as a new editix document. Most of the time it should be non-pressed.
• Set of parameters (optional) : This is a set of XSLT parameters we describe below
  

Warning : A message can appear when setting a file path "Please don't use path with whitespaces inside". You can disable it from the options menu, using the preferences dialog. Select xml / xslt and "check whitespaces in path", choose false and restart editix.

For using XSLT parameters, the user must declare the needed parameters inside the XSLT document under the root node : As sample :

<xsl:param name="test1"></xsl:param>
...

<xsl:value-of select="$test1"/>

b. Assign an XSLT document

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="file:///home/test/test.xsl"?>

c. XSLT Debug

	Start the XSLT Debugging. It will run until the first breakpoint
	Run until the next breakpoint
	Run step by step
	Conclude the XSLT Debugging

• "Call stack" : This is the previous XSLT elements processed. The user can click on a line for displaying the similar line inside the XSLT editor. Two icons and are respectively for output elements and XSLT elements (with an XSLT prefix).
• "XPath NodeSet" : This is the current XPath expression evaluated with the found nodes. By clicking one a line, EditiX will display the similar line inside the data source view. Two icons and are respectivly for available nodes and for the current node (from the xpath context).
  
• "Variables" : This is a set of accessible variables with their name, type and value. By clicking on a line, EditiX will show you the bound line inside your XSLT document.
• "Parameters" : It will display global and local parameters ( for templates ).
  

8. DocBook document

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.0//EN"  "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.0/docbookx.dtd">

<book>
    <bookinfo>
        <title>Your title</title>
        <author>
            <firstname>Your first name</firstname>
            <surname>Your surname</surname>
            <affiliation>
                <address>
                    <email>Your e-mail address</email>
                </address>
            </affiliation>
        </author>
        <copyright>
            <year>2004</year>
            <holder role="mailto:your e-mail address">Your name</holder>
        </copyright>
        <abstract>
            <para>Include an abstract of the book&apos;s contents</para>
        </abstract>
    </bookinfo>
    <part>
        <title>Part1</title>
        <chapter>
            <title>Part 1, Chapter 1</title>
            <sect1>
                <title>Part1, Chapter 1, Section1</title>
                <para>    Your Text </para>
            </sect1>
        </chapter>
    </part>
</book>

a. Basic Transforming

• HTML
• HTML Help
• XHTML
• Java Help
• FO
• PDF
• XML
• PRINT
• PCL
• PS
• TXT
• SVG
  

b. Repeating the last transformation

9. XSL-FO  document

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">
  <fo:layout-master-set>
    <fo:simple-page-master master-name="my-page">
      <fo:region-body margin="1in"/>
    </fo:simple-page-master>
  </fo:layout-master-set>

  <fo:page-sequence master-reference="my-page">
    <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
      <fo:block>My text</fo:block>
    </fo:flow>
  </fo:page-sequence>
</fo:root>

a. Basic Transforming

• PDF
• GUI Windows : It will open a dialog box with the transformation result
• MIF
• XML
• PRINT
• PCL
• PS
• TXT
• SVG

b. Repeating the last transformation

For repeating the last transformation the user must activate the "Repeat last transformation" from the "FO" menu. For saving the parameters
it is required to save the document inside a project from the "File" menu.

10. XML Form

The XML Form is a way for editing an XML document using a standard form, it helps users creating or changing an XML document with a minimal knowledge. The form is built using the XML Form Designer inside EditiX. This designer works using a W3C Schema with a mapping system between some schema elements and some form fields.

a. XML Form Designer

Before using the XML Form Designer you need a W3C Schema. We propose this W3C Schema as a sample : purchaseOrder.xsd [HTML documentation]. We are building an XML Form document (*.exf) with our schema.

Step 1 [Preview] : Create a new document (Menu File, New...) and choose "EditiX XML Form Designer".

Step 2 [Preview] : In the left part (Data tab) select your schema inside the "Schema Location" field. You may have to choose a root element because a W3C schema doesn't contain information about the main container element. The document structure contains a tree with your W3C schema content starting from your element root.

Step 3 [Preview] : Drag 'n drop your fields in the main designer part. Your form fields must be bound to the W3C schema structure, it means if you have an element that is a container of other elements, then it must appear in the main designer part as a container field. Each field contains a relative XPath location showing your field location in the final document structure, this is used by EditiX to compute the XML document result.

For customizing your form, you can add labels, separators... using the components tab with a drag'n drop in the main designer. You may also change some components properties using the properties tab like the background or the foreground color... The title properties is only for the container field. You may also edit the XML Form fields switching the source editor, this is useful for some processings like a search/replace.

You may download the final form sample here.

b. XML Form Editor

For using the XML Form editor, it requires an XML Form document (*.exf), look at the previous paragraph for building it.

Step 1 [Preview] : Create a new document (Menu File, New...) and choose "EditiX XML Form Editor ".

The empty document contains a processing instruction "<?xmlform 'YOUR_FORM_PATH'?>". This processing instruction must be set with a path to your XML Form (*.exf). This path can be absolute or relative to your document location (save it firstly for this last case).

As a sample we can save our document in the same directory of our xml form (*.exf) and set the processing instruction with this value :

<?xmlform 'purchaseOrder.exf'?>

Step 2 [Preview] : Switch to the Visual Editor, it will display an XML Form for editing your XML document. You can switch to the source editor for changing the final document, the XML Form will keep any XML added parts (even if there're no fields managing it).

The result documents can be downloaded here.

For loading your XML document and edit it with a form, you must always select the File Filter "EditiX Form Editor" before choosing your XML Document inside the file chooser dialog.

11. XML Scenario

a. Creating a scenario

Create a new document and choose the XML Scenario template from the Tools category.

A new scenario document is created with

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<scenario></scenario>

"scenario" is a root tag containg your XML tasks. For building your scenario, you must click on the "Visual Editor" tab.

This is a sequence of XML tasks. Select a task, Click on the "No Action" popup and choose your task type, then define a task name by clicking on the name column. Depending on your Task type, the parameters panel will be updated, thus, you will be able to configure your task.

Here a list of task type

When a task processes a set of documents, a Source filter is used with the following format : "(.*).XXX". This is a regular expression matching any file having a XXX extension. The parenthesis are here for the prefix part of the file name. For sample : (.*).xml will match any .xml documents. The postfix part of the file name is inside the parenthesis. This postfix can be reused for choosing the file target name using $1.

Sample about filter with an XSLT task

In this sample, we try to transform a set of XML documents to HTML using the same stylesheet, using the right filter and target we can have the same postfix inside the result file.

b. Running a scenario

You may run task by task () or the whole scenario () inside EditiX. When an error is found the scenario is interrupted.

It is also possible to run it outside editix using the scenario.bat (for Windows) or the scenario.sh (for Unix/Linux/Mac OS X) script from the bin directory. For Mac OS X you must download the unix/linux or raw version. In all case, you must open a terminal and pass to the script the scenario file path. You must be sure on unix/linux/Mac OS X platform to have right to run the scenario.sh script using the command line "chmod u+x scenario.sh".

12. Document preview

a. HTML Preview

b. SVG Preview

13. User preferences

• A list of groups
• A list of preferences for the selected group

a. List of user preferences

b. Installing a new XML Parser

1. Copy inside the EDITIX_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/ext/parser directory your jar file(s)
   
2. Modify the xmlconfig / parser preference with your JAXP SAXParser factory class
   
3. Restart EditiX

c. Installing a new XSLT Transformer

1. Copy inside the EDITIX_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/ext/xslt directory your jar file(s)
2. Modify the xmlconfig / xslt preference with your JAXP Tranformer factory class
3. Restart EditiX

1. Download SAXON (http://saxon.sourceforge.net)
2. Copy saxon.jar to the EDITIX_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/ext/xslt directory
   
3. Modify inside the EditiX the preference xmlconfig / transformer with the value com.icl.saxon.TransformerFactoryImpl
4. Restart EditiX

14. EditiX Descriptor & Plugins

a. Descriptor Dialog

EditiX is built around a main XML descriptor. This descriptor is located by default in the res subdirectory of your installation directory.

You may update this descriptor for changing Menus, Toolbars and Adding new Features to EditiX using the Options / EditiX Descriptor menu item.

The tree part of the descriptor editor displays menus, toolbars, popups.

For each item selected from the tree, a set of UI properties are available inside the "User Interface" tab. Similalry, The "Java Library" displays the java code bound to the item.

When ending your descriptor change, you must activate the "Save" button for definitive usage. For testing, you must restart the application, if an error is found the default descriptor will be used.

b. Plugins

A plugin is a a Java swing Action class or a JavaScript code. An action is a bound to a menu, toolbar or popup item. For adding a plugin, you must add a new item inside the tree, with the "Library" tab, you will have to specify your java libraries (*.jar) and your action class, or specify your JavaScript code at the libraries place.

EditiX contains a plugin API for controlling the editor (located in the editix.jar from your installation directory bin). All is available from EditiXManager class, the editor model is a collection of opened documents, each document is bound to a text or DOM source you may update. This plugin API works both in Java and JavaScript. In JavaScript a predefined object EditiXManager is available (which is in fact an instance of the EditiXManager class).

Here a set of Java samples (available from the samples directory of the installation directory).

Basic : It displays a simple dialog box when activating

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;

import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;

/**
 * Here a very simple basic case that can be included inside EditiX using the
 * Options/Editix Descriptor menu item.
 * @author Alexandre Brillant ( http://www.editix.com ) */
public class Basic extends AbstractAction {

	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
		JOptionPane.showMessageDialog( null, "Hello World" );
	}

}

Note : It creates a new XML document with a note root.

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import com.japisoft.editix.plugin.EditiXManager;
import com.japisoft.editix.plugin.EditixDocument;

/**
 * Very simple plugin adding a new XML document with a note root
 * @author Alexandre Brillant (http://www.abrillant.com)
 */
public class Note extends AbstractAction {

	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
		// Add a new document
		EditixDocument ed = EditiXManager.getInstance().getDocumentModel().newDocument( "XML" );
		// Fill it
		ed.setTextContent( "\n" );
	}

}

Update Content : This action will add a new item node to the current XML document root.

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import com.japisoft.editix.plugin.EditiXManager;
import com.japisoft.editix.plugin.EditixDocument;

/**
 * Very simple plugin updating the current DOM
 * @author Alexandre Brillant (http://www.editix.com)
 */
public class UpdateContent extends AbstractAction {

	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {

		EditixDocument doc = EditiXManager.getInstance().getDocumentModel().getCurrentDocument();
		if ( doc == null ) {
			System.out.println( "Ignoring this action" );
		} else {
			try {
				// Get the current DOM document 
				Document dom = doc.getDOMContent();
				if ( dom == null ) {
					EditiXManager.getInstance().info( "No current XML document" );
					return;
				}

				Element root = dom.getDocumentElement();

				// Create an item element with a date attribute and a content sample
				// Add it to the document root
				Element newItem = dom.createElement( "item" );
				newItem.setAttribute( "date", new SimpleDateFormat( "dd/MM/yy" ).format( new Date() ) );
				newItem.appendChild( dom.createTextNode( "My item" ) );
				
				root.appendChild( newItem );

				// Updating the current content with this new content
				doc.setDomContent( dom );
				
				EditiXManager.getInstance().activeAction( "format" );

			} catch( Exception exc ) {
				
				EditiXManager.getInstance().info( "Invalid document " + exc.getMessage() );
				
			}
		}
		
	}

}

15. Scripting

a. Install a script

A Script is a JavaScript code. A Script can be installed from the Application Descriptor or by the Options Menu :

By Selecting "Manage Scripts" you can add a script and bound it to a name or a shortkey.

In this sample, we add a script "Info" located in the path "c:\test.js" and activable by this combination of ctrl shift z.

b. Run a script

For running your script, you must reload editix and use the shortkey or you can choose the Run a Script sub menu.

c. Create a script

a script is a JavaScript file. This is standard JavaScript except you didn't interact with an HTML document (with the predefined document object) but with EditiX through the EditiXManager object. This object is an instance of a Java class ( EditiXManager class).

Here a sample for putting a message inside editix

EditiXManager.info( "Hello World" ); 

Another one for inserting a new tag at the caret location

// Ask for a node name
var nodeName = EditiXManager.prompt( "Test", "YourNodeName" );

 // If a response is available
if ( nodeName ) {
   // Return the current document
   var document = EditiXManager.getDocumentModel().getCurrentDocument();
   // Put the new node at the caret location
   document.insertTextAt( document.getCaretLocation(), "<" + nodeName + "></" + nodeName + ">" );
 }

For starting a new script, various sample are available by default inside the new document dialog.

• Hello World : A Basic script for sending a message to the interface
• New Node : Insert a node at the caret location
• Surround : Surround the selection by a new node
• Documents : Search for all XML documents and insert a comment before the root node
• Java : Create a swing Frame with a button
• DOM : Update the current XML document using the DOM API for putting a new attribute at the root

You can also download these scripts and new ones at this page :

http://www.editix.com/scripts.html

You can also share your scripts to the users community by sending us.

16. EditiX Components

• The Saxon XSLT and XQuery Processor from Saxonica Limited
• JXMLPad a swing component for editing XML from JAPISoft
• JDock a swing docking environment from JAPISoft.
• JResourceBrowser a swing component for browsing FTP,WebDAV,ZIP content from JAPISoft.
  

17. Uninstalling EditiX

The following procedure will remove EditiX XML Editor from your system. Be sure that all valuable data stored in the install folder is saved to another location.

• On Windows use the appropriate uninstaller shortcut
  
• On Mac OS X and Unix manually delete the installation folder and all its contents

For removing all the editix's preferences, please delete the directory YOUR_HOME_DIRECTORY/.editix